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javascriptfan69 12 hours ago

Current cost to LEO is $1500 per kg

That would make your solar panel (40kg) around $60K to put into space.

Even being generous and assuming you could get it to $100 per kg that's still $4000

There's a lot of land in the middle of nowhere that is going to be cheaper than sending shit to space.

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trhway 8 hours ago | parent [-]

>That would make your solar panel (40kg) around $60K to put into space.

with the GPU costing the same, it would only double the capex.

>Even being generous and assuming you could get it to $100 per kg that's still $4000

noise compare to the main cost - GPUs.

>There's a lot of land in the middle of nowhere that is going to be cheaper than sending shit to space.

Cheapness of location of your major investment - GPUs - may as well happen to be secondary to other considerations - power/cooling capacity stable availability, jurisdiction, etc.

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estomagordo 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> with the GPU costing the same, it would only double the capex.

Yes, only doubling the capex. With the benefits of, hmm, no maintenance access and awful networking?

	▲	ndsipa_pomu 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Don't forget the major problem with cooling

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blackoil 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Any idea, what is the estimated cost of a Google TPU. It may not make sense for Nvidia retail price but at cost price of Google.

	▲	trhway 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Can only speculate out of thin air - B200 and Ryzen 9950x made on the same process and have 11x difference in die size. 11 Ryzens would cost $6K, and with 200Gb RAM - $8K. Googling brings that the B200 cost or production is $6400. That matches the numbers from the Ryzen based estimate above (Ryzen numbers is retail, yet it has higher yield, so balance). So, i'd guess that given Google scale a TPU similar to B200 should be $6K-$10K.

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iso1631 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> jurisdiction

This is the big thing, but Elon's child porn generator in orbit will be subject to US jurisdiction, just as much as if they were in Alaska. I guess he can avoid state law.

If jurisdiction is key, you can float a DC in international waters on a barge flying the flag of Panama or similar flag of convenience which you can pretty much buy at this scale. Pick a tin-pot country, fling a few million to the dictator, and you're set - with far less jurisdiction problems than a US, Russia, France launched satellite.